Elizabeth Sam accepts general offer

Mr Cheong had earlier said he was not planning to revise his takeover bid.

AN INDEPENDENT director of SC Global gave up making $100,000 or more by taking up chief executive Simon Cheong's offer for her shares instead of offloading them on the open market.

Mrs Elizabeth Sam accepted Mr Cheong's offer of $1.80 a share for her shares in the upmarket developer.

Mrs Sam, who held 552,974 SC Global shares, will collect $995,353, after the offer closes. The acceptance was disclosed on the Singapore Exchange website late on Wednesday.

SC Global shares hit a high of $2.05 on Dec 17, 12 days after Mr Cheong announced that he wanted to take the developer private by buying up all the shares that he did not already own.

The shares traded around the $2 range over several trading sessions on hefty volumes. Assuming she could fetch $2 per share for her stake, it would have yielded her an additional $110,000 than what she stands to get now.

Although the price of the shares have since retreated from that high, they have remained above $1.80. They rose two cents higher to close at $1.84 yesterday.

Mrs Sam has been on SC Global's board since July 2002.

According to the firm's 2011 annual report, she chairs the audit committee, is acting chairman of the remuneration committee, and a member of the nomination committee. She is also a non-executive director of the group's subsidiary in Australia, AVJennings.

When asked by The Straits Times why she chose to sell her shares at Mr Cheong's offer price, she would only say: "It is in line with the recommendation made by the IFA (independent financial adviser)."